Study for "Great America" (Mother and Child) c. 1994

Here's a graphite drawing of a mother and child made by Kerry James Marshall. It looks like the preliminary sketch for a painting - maybe he made other sketches too, crossing out lines, rethinking shapes. That’s what I do. I imagine Marshall is thinking about the composition and how the figures relate to each other. It’s like he’s building a structure, block by block, figuring out the angles and weight. There are a lot of decisions an artist makes before the painting even starts, like the size and shape of the support to the weight of the line. The lines feel tentative but there is no doubt about the tenderness between the mother and child. It makes me think about Alice Neel, how she used drawing to capture the psychological presence of her sitters. This drawing feels so raw and full of possibility. It reminds me that painting is all about asking questions.